Stop Asking Why There s Anything

Size: px
Start display at page:

Download "Stop Asking Why There s Anything"

Transcription

1 Erkenn (2012) 77:51 63 DOI /s ORIGINAL ARTICLE Stop Asking Why There s Anything Stephen Maitzen Received: 28 May 2010 / Accepted: 16 July 2011 / Published online: 14 August 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V Abstract Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? This question often serves as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question couched in such stark, general terms as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I argue, not because it s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is ill-posed and hence has no answer in the first place. In any form in which it is well-posed, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. 1 Introduction Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? Leibniz called it the first question that should rightly be asked (1714, p. 527), and Heidegger called it not only the fundamental question of metaphysics but the first of all questions (1959, p. 1). Nowadays the question more commonly comes up as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question couched in such completely general terms as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I ll argue, not because it s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is defective, ill-posed, and hence has no answer. In any form in which it is a well-posed question, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. In short, we ought to stop asking Why is there anything? The utterance is a pseudo-question if construed at face value and, at best, a tendentious way of asking S. Maitzen (&) Department of Philosophy, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS B4P 2R6, Canada smaitzen@acadiau.ca

2 52 S. Maitzen other questions that are well-posed and answerable, in principle, by science. Better, then, to ask those other questions instead. My argument applies equally to variants of the same question that one also often sees, such as Why is there something (rather than nothing) (at all)? I don t claim that my argument dissolves every question we might ask about the origin of the cosmos, only that we ought to stop asking various pseudo-questions about it that philosophers and ordinary folk commonly do ask. 2 The Context Naturalistic objectors to theism say that the state of today s science makes us less in need of God to explain the workings of the universe than even Laplace was, who two centuries ago famously claimed no explanatory need for God at all. Naturalists point to the many phenomena we used to attribute to supernatural agents but can now explain scientifically: the change of seasons, the course of a disease, the orbits of planets, and on and on. Their theistic opponents often admit that natural science has discovered not only good piecemeal explanations of the existence of particular phenomena but even good integrated explanations of the existence and operation of entire systems. In this sense, the opponents concede that natural science can answer not only mechanistic how questions but also existential why questions, such as Why are there penguins? or Why is there cancer? Yet they hasten to point out that natural science hasn t explained why there exists anything at all: not specific things or kinds of things but anything in the first place, anything in general. But what, more precisely, is this theistic challenge to naturalism? Pretty clearly the challenge isn t to explain the existence of metaphysically necessary things, since in those cases there s no contrasting state of affairs, no state of affairs in which they don t exist, that could have obtained instead. 1 Rather, the challenge is to explain the existence of contingent things, those things that didn t have to exist, and even then only some contingent things. If the singleton set containing Mars exists, it exists contingently, since its only member exists contingently and sets owe their identity to their members. But if the set {Mars} exists, it exists abstractly, and presumably it s not {Mars} the set but Mars the planet whose existence naturalism is expected to explain. In other words, the challenge to naturalism expressed in the question Why is there anything? doesn t seem to rest on the assumption that theism explains the existence of abstracta better than naturalism does especially because, if there are abstracta, then some of them (say, the integers or the law of noncontradiction) seem both uncreatable and independent of God. Instead, the challenge is meant to invoke only those contingent things that are also concrete, i.e., that exist in spacetime. Properly put, then, the challenge to naturalism is that natural science may do a fine job accounting for particular contingent, concrete things and kinds of things, but it isn t equipped or even meant to tell us why any such things exist at all. 1 Philosophers, including Leibniz himself, typically interpret the first question that should rightly be asked as referring only to those things that could have failed to exist. See van Inwagen (1996, pp ) and O Connor (2008) among the many recent treatments that interpret the question this way.

3 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 53 Many philosophers have taken seriously the theistic challenge Explain why there s anything contingent and concrete at all and have tried to answer it with metaphysical arguments. 2 Other philosophers regard the challenge as well-posed but sufficiently met if natural science can explain the existence of each given contingent, concrete thing. Their spokesman is Hume s Cleanthes: Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts. 3 This latter group, however, faces opponents who say that a well-posed question remains even if science can provide each of those particular explanations: the question Why are there these contingent, concrete things rather than none at all? Their spokesman is Hume s Demea: The question is still reasonable, why this particular succession of causes existed from eternity, and not any other succession or no succession at all. 4 It s not just philosophers who take the theistic challenge seriously; so do some much more visible contributors to our culture. Even as battle-hardened a critic of theism as comedian Bill Maher, co-producer and star of the irreverent documentary Religulous, is stumped by the challenge and softens his position as a result. Plugging his documentary on an episode of CNN s Larry King Live, Maher confessed the following about the existential questions allegedly answered by theism: [Y]ou just give yourself a headache thinking about them. I mean, if you start thinking about these things, you kind of get down to Why is there anything? Try to ponder that one afternoon if you re not high. See, there may be answers. I m not saying that there isn t something out there. I m not strictly an atheist. An atheist is certain there s no God. [Maher 2008] In the face of the challenge, then, some of the world s most visible atheists think they need to disavow atheism and retreat to mere agnosticism. 3 Dummy Sortals and Pseudo-Questions But they needn t. The question Why is there anything? deserves no reply, because it s ill-posed for a reason that the following example, I believe, helps to 2 Recent examples include Goldstick (1979), Lowe (1996), van Inwagen (1996), Lowe (1998, ch. 12), Grünbaum (2004), Rundle (2004), all of which give non-theistic answers; O Connor (2008), which gives a theistic answer; and Parfit (1998), whose answer is harder to classify. I find it curious that Lowe takes seriously the challenge Why is there anything? given his many persuasive defenses of a sortalist ontology of the kind I m using to dismiss the challenge as ill-posed (e.g., Lowe 1989, ch. 2). Taking the challenge seriously forces Lowe to defend two highly contentious claims: (i) infinitely many sets and natural numbers exist but, remarkably enough, not the empty set or the number zero; (ii) every possible world contains at least one concrete object, even if no concrete object exists in every possible world (Lowe 1998, pp ). For a sortalist like Lowe, (ii) implies that although there needn t exist pens, or plums, or penguins (and so on, for every sortal), it s metaphysically necessary that, at all times, there exists some concrete object or other belonging to some genuine kind. 3 Hume (1779, p. 66). Edwards (1967) endorses this position, as is well known. 4 Hume (1779, p. 64). Burke (1984) endorses this position, citing also Rowe (1975) as endorsing it.

4 54 S. Maitzen make evident. Hold a capped ballpoint pen in your otherwise-empty hand. Now consider the question Exactly how many things are you holding in your hand? You can t answer the question if it s posed in those terms. Are you supposed to count both the pen and its cap? The question, as posed, doesn t imply one answer or the other. (If you remove the cap from the pen and hold both in your hand, why are you now holding two things in your hand if before you held just one?) What about the pen s barrel shell, ink cartridge, and metal tip? What about arbitrary proper parts such as various one-centimeter cross-sections of the barrel shell? You ll get uncountably many such cross-sections if you re allowed to vary their starting or ending boundaries across a continuum of spatial points; countably many (but in principle indefinitely many) such cross-sections if you can vary the boundaries only discretely rather than continuously. Why not also count each of the quarks and electrons that standard physics says constitute the pen and their proper parts too? It might seem as though we can say that either you re holding exactly Q things, where Q is the countable infinity of the rational numbers, or you re holding exactly R things, where R is the uncountable infinity of the reals. We might say that you re holding exactly Q things if the boundaries of things can have only discrete values, or exactly R things if boundaries can vary continuously. But Exactly Q or exactly R is hardly a straight answer to Exactly how many? especially since R, having uncountably more members, is vastly larger than Q. Now, some considerations from mereology suggest that the number of things you re holding can t be as small as Q, even if boundaries vary only discretely. For suppose you re holding exactly Q things. Each of those Q things (and each of its parts) is arguably itself a part in various fusions with other of the Q things you re holding (and their parts), one fusion for each non-empty, non-singleton subset of those things (and parts). But, for Cantorian reasons, those subsets outnumber the Q things you re holding, even if we rule out fusions consisting of already overlapping parts; the number of those subsets has a cardinality of at least R. So you re holding at least R things even if boundaries vary only discretely. If boundaries vary continuously, then you re holding at least R things even before we consider fusions, and thus you re holding many more than R things when we include fusions. Furthermore, if two distinct things can share all of their parts as many would say occurs in the case of a gold ring, for instance, and the lump of gold that constitutes it then you re holding even more things than the fusions you re holding, whether or not boundaries vary continuously. 5 Clearly things are getting out of hand, if you ll excuse the pun. It emerges that the question of exactly how many things you re holding has no answer, or at the very least it has no answer that anyone could reasonably fault naturalism for failing to provide. Even if you allow only three-dimensional objects into your ontology, you d first have to settle whether mereological sums and arbitrary undetached parts ought to count as things you re holding, and if so exactly how many of those ought to count. Even if mereological sums qualify as things you re holding, the question 5 I assume that (a) boundaries can have all the rational values in some interval even if they can have only discrete values in that interval, which in turn assumes that (b) there s no smallest possible change to a boundary. If we deny (b), then the number of things you re holding will be finite even if we include fusions. Again, however, Exactly R or exactly some finite value is hardly a straight answer to Exactly how many? I thank Geoffrey Mason for flagging my assumption of (b).

5 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 55 remains unanswered whether various particular fusions of the pen (or parts of the pen) with any of various atoms of hydrogen elsewhere in the universe also qualify as things you re holding. It certainly seems they could: you re holding all but the tiniest fraction of their mass, and common sense allows that you continue to hold a pen even if an atom of its mass escapes to the surrounding air. (If these sums count, however, then the number of things you re holding positively soars.) But metaphysicians can t agree that these subsidiary questions even have answers, and so at the very least naturalism can t be worse-off than theism for failing to answer them when theism also fails to answer them. The question Exactly how many things are you holding? comes no closer to having an answer if we restrict things to contingent things, concrete things, physical things, material things, cylindrical things, macroscopic things, plastic things, metal things, or indeed things modified in any familiar way. There s a straightforward, if often overlooked, reason why it lacks an answer. The term thing is what David Wiggins (1967, p. 29) calls a dummy sortal, a term that (despite how it may sometimes appear) fails to denote a genuine kind of object object being another dummy sortal, along with individual, item, entity, being, and (in the metaphysical sense) substance. Such terms lack criteria of identity governing the instances that are supposed to fall under them, and hence there can be no correct answer to the question of exactly how many things (objects, individuals, items, entities, beings, substances) occupy a given location or to the question Exactly which things exist? if we construe things in an unrestricted way (Thomasson 2007, p. 113). Even though such dummy sortals function grammatically as count nouns, they don t function logically as count nouns (Lowe 1989, pp. 11, 25), and thus the senselessness of the literally meant question Exactly how many things are you holding? arises from its confusion of grammatical and logical function. Criteria of identity also supply conditions for the persistence of the instances they govern, which explains why you can t answer the question Did the thing(s) you re holding survive the last ten seconds? if you construe it at face value. One potential referent of thing is a collection of matter having perfectly precise spatial boundaries, whose precision therefore means it probably didn t survive even that long. By contrast, the term pen functions both grammatically and logically as a count noun, and so the question Exactly how many pens are you holding? admits of a right answer: one if our common-sense ontology is true, zero if it isn t (if, say, the fuzzy boundaries that common-sense objects must possess are incoherent). Similarly, the questions Exactly which pens exist? and Did the pen you re holding survive the last ten seconds? have right answers depending on whether our common-sense ontology is true and on the empirical facts. 6 6 Although I assume that common-sense objects have fuzzy boundaries if such objects exist at all, the problem I ve raised for the fundamental question doesn t stem from vagueness. Even if all of the objects you re holding have perfectly precise boundaries (in which case, again, you can t hold them for long), the questions Exactly how many objects are you holding? and Why do these objects exist? are too unspecific to admit of answers. Why do I add the qualification that the well-formed counting questions have right answers depending on whether our common-sense ontology is true? Only because, despite my sympathy for theories such as Thomasson s (2007, 2009) that see the truth of our common-sense ontology as a pseudo-issue, I m not yet convinced that sorites arguments against ordinary objects can be rebutted in either of the two main ways Thomasson considers: supervaluationism and Tye-style

6 56 S. Maitzen To be sure, sortalist theories aren t without controversy, but despite the controversy we can see from the foregoing considerations the deep confusion in the literally meant questions Exactly how many things are you holding? and Did the thing(s) you re holding survive the last ten seconds? These considerations, I believe, also show that the question Why is there anything? (i.e., Why is there any thing? ) confuses grammatical and logical function and hence necessarily lacks an answer, even though the question Why are there any pens [or plums, or penguins]? has an answer. Only the latter sentence contains a true sortal, 7 a term whose presence allows the sentence to ask a genuine question. But it s also a question that there s every reason to think natural science can answer. Once we abandon the ill-posed fundamental question in favor of a question that invokes only true sortals, we no longer get the sense that natural science can t in principle answer it. Some people regard the fundamental question as one that science can t answer because all science can do is explain the existence of particular contingent, concrete things by reference to other contingent, concrete things, which always leaves unanswered the question Why are there any contingent, concrete things in the first place; why are there any such things at all? This view of scientific explanation seems to have motivated the logical positivists to reject Why is there anything? as a pseudo-question. But their reason for rejecting it seems to me a less basic reason than the one I m offering here, i.e., that the question s reliance on the dummy sortal thing leaves it indeterminate what s being asked. By the same token, I m also not rejecting the question on the basis of the positivists verificationist criterion of cognitive significance, a widely discredited reason for rejecting a whole range of metaphysical questions. Nor do I think the best reason for rejecting the question as ill-posed is the reason that (so far as I can tell) Wittgenstein gives for rejecting it, namely, that the relevant attitude can t grammatically or sensibly be expressed as a question: Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be mere nonsense (quoted in Waismann 2005, p. 68). In my view, the astonishment that anything at all exists is senseless even before it prompts or becomes a question, unless anything is replaced by, or interpreted as a substitute for, some true sortal. The same points about grammar and logic show that we can t make the fundamental question any better-posed by recasting it in terms of other nongenuine sortals, such as fact, state of affairs, situation, event, or cause. 8 The question Why have any events at all occurred? for example, is no better-posed Footnote 6 continued indeterminism. It would, however, take me too far afield here to explain exactly why I m not yet convinced. 7 More precisely, a true substance sortal. 8 Marcus (2006) argues persuasively and in detail for the claim that event is not a true sortal. For the reasons Marcus gives in regard to event, I d include cause (as in Demea s why this particular succession of causes, discussed above) among dummy sortals as well. Given the arbitrariness, or interest-relativity, involved in identifying one event but not another as a cause, the question Exactly how many causes occurred in the last hour? looks just as unanswerable as the other pseudo-questions we ve identified.

7 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 57 than the question Exactly how many events occurred in the last hour? By contrast, the questions Exactly how many human births occurred in the last hour? and Why have any human births at all occurred? avoid the meaninglessness that comes from the former questions use of dummy sortals, but they also look susceptible to naturalistic answers. To put matters in the formal mode, the terms thing, object, and so on, don t refer unless they re meant as abstractions from or are covering uses 9 of terms generalizing over what there really is: pens, plums, human births, explosions, and so on. 10 Moreover, I should emphasize, the distinction between grammatical and logical function applies strictly speaking to the concepts corresponding to the English terms thing, object, event, and so on (compare Wiggins 1967). Therefore, my complaint about the fundamental question isn t answered by posing the question in a language using different terms to express those same concepts. The nature of my complaint may become clearer if we imagine the following exchange: A: Why is there anything? B: What do you mean? Are you asking why numbers exist? A: No. If numbers exist, they had to exist. Why is there anything that didn t have to exist? B: So you re asking why there are any contingent things. Well, there are pens, which are contingent things, and here s how pens come to exist A: No! I m not asking why there are any pens. B: All right then. Penguins exist, and they re contingent. Penguins evolved from A: No! I m not asking why there are penguins either. I m asking why there are any contingent things at all. B s answers may seem deliberately obtuse, but they bring out the emptiness of A s questions: A rejects each of B s attempts to supply determinate content to the dummy sortal contingent things, but without such content there s no determinate question being asked. Once contingent things takes on content (e.g., in one of the ways B suggests), the resulting question becomes empirical and scientifically answerable. Or suppose I mention pens, plums, and penguins. You then ask me, Why are there any of the things you just mentioned? but tell me you don t want explanations of the existence of pens, plums, or penguins in particular; instead, you want to know why there are any of the things I just mentioned (with table-pounding emphasis on any ) rather than none at all. Clearly your attitude is perverse: the things I just mentioned is only a covering term for pens, plums, and penguins; it doesn t pick out a category of thing requiring an explanation beyond those I was 9 I owe the label covering use to Thomasson (2007, p. 117, et passim). 10 To use the material mode, there are no (i.e., it is not the case that there are any) things, objects, items, beings, substances, facts, states of affairs, situations, causes, or events as such. In sum, if one insists on answering the question Why are there any things? at face value, the best answer is There aren t any.

8 58 S. Maitzen already prepared to give and you didn t want to hear. Likewise for contingent things and the other dummy sortals I ve discussed: there aren t any contingent things whose explanations outstrip the explanations available for the individuals covered by the covering term contingent things. For the same reason, we can see that the question Why does the Universe exist? taken in the way that objectors to naturalism must intend it, also poses no unanswerable challenge to naturalism, for it amounts to asking (again) Why are there any contingent, concrete things at all? or (again) Why are there these contingent, concrete things rather than none at all? or perhaps Why are there these contingent, concrete things rather than other such things? Once we substitute true sortals ( pens, plums, penguins, etc.) so that those latter questions have more sense than the question Exactly how many contingent, concrete things are you holding in your hand? they seem to admit of naturalistic answers. If, moreover, the explanatory challenge to naturalism should consist of a long disjunctive question Why are there pens, or plums, or penguins, or? then of course naturalism can offer a long disjunctive answer. Someone who finds David Lewis s modal realism plausible might try to revive the question Why does the Universe exist? as a challenge to naturalism by recasting the question as Why does the actual world exist? where the actual world is as Lewis describes it: a concrete object including, or consisting of, everything spatiotemporally related to whoever asks the latter question. In this case no counting problems arise, since there s always exactly one actual world. According to Lewis, however, the question poses no deep problem: of necessity, all possible worlds exist, and actual is only an indexical term referring to the single world inhabited by the speaker. On Lewis s view, Why is our world actual? makes no more sense, or at any rate is no harder to answer, than Why is here here? In responding this way, I don t mean to endorse Lewis s controversial ontology of possible worlds, only to show that someone who does accept that ontology has an easy way of dissolving the question Why does the actual world exist? A different attempt to revive the question might be to ask Why isn t the actual world a world without concrete things? where the questioner rejects Lewis s indexical analysis and uses actual to designate our world rigidly. In one sense, this question also answers itself, or at least it doesn t require the kind of explanation we d require for a contingent fact, because if actual rigidly designates our world, then it s metaphysically necessary that the actual world contains exactly the concrete things our world contains. World-indexed truths are metaphysically necessary truths. But suppose we waive this objection and agree that the question deserves a less trivial answer. In that case, we can reply along the lines of character B in my dialogue: there are (for instance) penguins, which are concrete things, and hence the actual world contains at least some concrete things. Someone more patient (or less confused) than character A might then ask, But why are there penguins? and then we d be off on a chain of naturalistic explanations. Notice that it would add nothing for the questioner to point out that there didn t have to be penguins; no one is claiming that there had to be.

9 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 59 Lastly, consider the attempt to revive the question in a form acceptable to sortalists by recasting it in sortally quantified terms: Why is it that, for at least one sort or kind S, there are things of kind S? 11 Since the challenge to naturalism we re discussing concerns only contingent and concrete things, this question becomes more properly Why is it that, for at least one sort or kind S whose instances are contingent and concrete, there are things of kind S? But even this version of the question fares no better than the others. Hold a pen in your hand and consider the analogous question about counting: For at least one sort or kind S whose instances are contingent and concrete, exactly how many things of kind S are you holding in your hand? You can t in principle answer the question until someone specifies which kind S you should consider. The unqualified request to count makes no sense, and by the same token neither does the demand to explain the existence of contingent and concrete instances of some unnamed sort or kind. Sortalists must of course concede that we can sensibly quantify over sorts no sortalist would want to deny the assertion There are sorts but that concession doesn t imply that every question quantifying over sorts is well-posed. While we can indeed express the fundamental question in terms that quantify over sortals, we don t thereby produce a question that sortalists must regard as substantive. We simply recast the original pseudo-question in sortalist vocabulary. 12 Admittedly I ve spent a lot of time on the topic of exact counting, but only because it s illustrative: only because it clearly illustrates the senselessness that arises when we try to use dummy sortals as if they were genuine sortals. It s not that I regard counting as especially relevant to answering, or even dissolving, the fundamental question. Nor do I hold the clearly false view that only concepts captured by count nouns can be genuine sortals; so can concepts captured by mass nouns, a topic I ll return to shortly. My point has been that the content of a question changes significantly depending on which (if any) sortals it uses, regardless of whether the question asks Exactly how many exist? or instead Why do any exist? Recall why no one can answer the literally meant question Exactly how many things are you holding in your hand? : the word things has no determinate reference at all. The counting problem we ve examined arises not because the things we re asked to count are too numerous, or too small, or too fuzzy in their boundaries. Instead, the problem arises because it s indeterminate just what things we re supposed to count in the first place. The same problem arises, therefore, when we re asked to explain why there are any of those things at all: any of which things? What s the content of the question being asked? It has no content until we replace referentially indeterminate words with genuine sortals. The question Why are there penguins? 11 I owe this objection to an anonymous reviewer for Erkenntnis. 12 In a similar vein, Thomasson (2009, pp ) criticizes the attempt to recast natural-language pseudo-questions in terms that ostensibly avoid dummy sortals by using logical quantifiers and identity instead: Why are there any things? for example, becomes Why is it the case that Ax(x = x)? Thomasson gives various reasons for thinking that the attempt fails, among them that all definitions of the quantifiers sooner or later refer to things, objects, individuals, or some such, and hence these reformulations of general existence questions smuggle in the dummy sortals that deprived the original questions of determinate sense in the first place.

10 60 S. Maitzen has enough content to invite an answer, one that I ve suggested naturalism can in principle supply, whereas Why are there (concrete, contingent) things? again, taken literally has too little content to invite an answer from any quarter. 4 Dummy Sortals and Cosmological Arguments Even an expert on cosmological arguments for God s existence can fail to see that the presence of dummy sortals sometimes makes such arguments look better than they are. In a recent article William L. Rowe, who has studied the cosmological argument for decades, raises serious objections to two versions of the Principle of Sufficient Reason before offering the following principle as one that both survives those objections and also supports a supernaturalistic conclusion: For every kind of being such that beings of that kind can be caused to exist or can cause the existence of other beings, there must be a sufficient reason for the existence of each being of that kind and for the general fact that there exist beings of that kind. [Rowe 2005, p. 111] Notice, however, that Rowe s disjunctive term being that can be caused to exist or can cause the existence of other beings is a dummy sortal, again because it lacks criteria of identity for the instances it s supposed to govern. Or it s just a covering term that doesn t pick out a kind of thing requiring separate explanation. When you re holding the pen, there s no answer to exactly how many such beings you re holding, mainly because there s no answer to exactly how many beings you re holding that satisfy the term s first disjunct. Likewise for questions about the persistence of such beings across time. As far as I can tell, any version of Rowe s principle that contained only true sortals wouldn t leave him or anyone with the impression that science couldn t provide the sufficient reason that the principle requires. Michael Burke defends a version of the cosmological argument for supernaturalism while avoiding any direct appeal to the dummy sortals I ve mentioned so far. According to Burke, even if we can explain the existence of matter at every time at which matter has existed, we won t thereby explain the following additional fact: N It is not the case that matter never has existed. In other words, he says, we won t thereby explain why matter ever existed in the first place (Burke 1984, p. 357). Burke argues that N isn t explained by the law of the conservation of mass, nor is N explained by conjoining that law with the claim that matter has existed arbitrarily far into the past. He evidently sides with Demea against Cleanthes: explaining matter s existence at every time at which matter has existed doesn t explain why matter exists at all. As I said at the outset, I don t claim that my argument dissolves every question we might ask about the origin of the cosmos. I know too little physics to say whether N represents a contingent fact that naturalism can t in principle explain; I doubt anyone yet knows enough physics to say whether it does. Maybe Burke s

11 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 61 explanatory challenge survives, but before concluding that it does we should make sure it s well-posed. Although in the sentence Why has matter ever existed? it may seem that matter serves as an ordinary (indeed, a paradigm) mass noun, I have my doubts that matter as physics uses the term is a genuine mass noun at all. Given the abstruse things physics says about matter that it s equivalent to energy, that it bends light and even spacetime, that it can exist in a quark-gluon plasma at a temperature of four trillion degrees, etc. it s not clear that physics uses matter in a way that allows it to be classed in any ordinary-language category. But let s waive that objection and consider a different question. Is the term matter in the sentence Why has matter ever existed? so unrestricted that the sentence asks a pseudoquestion if construed at face value? There s reason to think it is. Now, one might argue that we avoid the quantitative puzzles that arose before when we asked Exactly how many things are you holding in your hand? because the quantity of matter you re holding in your hand is given by its objective mass mass sometimes being defined as quantity of matter. Nevertheless, three problems remain. First, as before, we need to settle on the referent of the pronoun it in the phrase its objective mass : does the pronoun refer to a fuzzy, common-sense object a pen, say or indefinitely many scattered mereological sums, and if so which sums? The mass of what you re holding will depend on the correct answer, if any, to this latter question. Second, according to relativity theory it s not clear that what you re holding has an objective mass, rather than various masses according to different inertial frames of reference no one of which is privileged. Even if we can resolve those quantitative puzzles, a third problem arises when we recall that true sortals supply conditions for the persistence of the instances that fall under them. So: Did the matter you re holding survive the last ten seconds? According to the conservation of mass (more properly, the conservation of massenergy, since the two are equivalent), the answer is always yes. Let a tenmegaton bomb go off nearby, and the mass-energy you re holding will survive, although you won t any longer be holding it. I see no significant difference between a dummy sortal such as thing, which supplies no persistence-conditions for the instances supposedly falling under it, and the term matter, which supplies persistence-conditions so relaxed that they re fulfilled regardless of any physically possible happening. In the case of the referent of matter, even if the persistencequestion always has an answer, how genuine a question can it be if the answer is the same under all possible circumstances? This result casts doubt on the question Why has matter ever existed? if that question is taken to be so general that naturalism can t answer it. 5 Conclusion At this point, defenders of supernaturalism might counter that naturalistic explanations must ultimately bottom out at brute, unexplained posits. But I see no reason naturalistic explanations can t go forever deeper. One bad reason for concluding that they can t is the notion that x can t explain y unless x itself is self-

12 62 S. Maitzen explanatory. I don t see that notion as at all implied by our ordinary concept of explanation, which allows that x can explain y even if something else altogether explains x. Moreover, there are grounds for thinking that naturalistic explanations not only could but must go forever deeper. A common attitude among scientists is that the more they discover, the more there is yet to discover the more they know, the more they realize they don t know a pattern there s no reason to think won t continue indefinitely. Indeed, scientific discoveries routinely raise at least as many questions as they answer. Biologists have described some 80,000 species of roundworm, for example, but suspect there might be a million species. More generally, having discovered organisms in places they didn t think could support life, biologists now worry that they lack even a rough idea of the total number of species; knowing more shows us we know less than we thought we knew. Furthermore, history teaches, just when some scientists begin to think the explanatory end is in sight, a revolution comes along to open domains of further inquiry. Maxwell gives way to Planck and Einstein, and Hilbert gives way to Gödel. Jonathan Schaffer usefully catalogues several other examples of this kind. 13 Indeed, if any facts are merely contingent, then what could it mean for naturalistic explanations to come to an end, for no further naturalistic answers to remain, even in principle? We might as well suppose there could be a conceptually smallest nonzero length. Finally, anyone who holds both that (a) every fact has a logically sufficient explanation and yet (b) some facts are contingent is committed to there being an endless regress of explanations. 14 If what I ve said is right, then why do people mistakenly assume that Why is there anything? makes sense construed at face value? Here I can only speculate. In many ordinary contexts we may implicitly understand the true sortals over which thing is generalizing; consider Exactly how many things did you buy today? said to someone just home from a shopping spree. So it s perhaps unsurprising that we d carry that implicit understanding into unrestricted metaphysical contexts where it doesn t hold. Thomasson (2007, pp ) offers a similar explanation: thing, object, etc., may function loosely as quasi-sortals in some contexts, but because they re only quasi-sortals it can happen even in those contexts that no determinate answer exists to the question Exactly how many things? Consider the disputes over what counts as a thing among those who ve accepted author Dave Bruno s 100-Thing Challenge, the challenge to own no more than 100 personal possessions. 15 Still less, then, is there a determinate answer when we remove even those implicit restrictions and ask, in full generality, Why is there anything? Let s stop doing that. 13 Schaffer (2003, pp ); compare Ladyman et al. (2007): We have inductive grounds for denying that there is [an ontologically] fundamental level [of reality], since every time one has been posited, it has turned out not to be fundamental after all (p. 178). 14 See Francken and Geirsson (1999). 15 See Bruno (2010). For obvious reasons, possessions and probably also personal possessions are dummy sortals; no wonder, then, that disputes arise over exactly how many you ve got.

13 Stop Asking Why There s Anything 63 Acknowledgments For helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, I thank Paul Abela, Andrew Graham, John Schellenberg, audiences at Dalhousie University and Western Michigan University, and two anonymous reviewers for Erkenntnis. References Bruno, D. (2010). The 100 thing challenge: How I got rid of almost everything, remade my life, and regained my soul. New York: Harper Collins. Burke, M. B. (1984). Hume and Edwards on Why is there something rather than nothing? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62, Edwards, P. (1967). The cosmological argument. In D. R. Burrell (Ed.), The cosmological arguments (pp. 101 ). Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Francken, P., & Geirsson, H. (1999). Regresses, sufficient reasons, and cosmological arguments. Journal of Philosophical Research, 24, Goldstick, D. (1979). Why is there something rather than nothing? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 40, Grünbaum, A. (2004). The poverty of theistic cosmology. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55, Heidegger, M. (1959). An introduction to metaphysics (G. Fried and R. Polt, Trans.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Hume, D. (1779). D. Coleman (Ed.), Dialogues concerning natural religion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, Ladyman, J., et al. (2007). Every thing must go. New York: Oxford University Press. Leibniz, G. W. F. (1714). The principles of nature and of grace, based on reason. In P. P. Wiener (Ed.), Leibniz selections (pp ). New York: Charles Scribner s Sons, Lowe, E. J. (1989). Kinds of being. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lowe, E. J. (1996). Why is there anything at all? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 70, Lowe, E. J. (1998). The possibility of metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Maher, B. (2008). Interview on CNN television s Larry King Live, 19 August. transcripts/0808/19/lkl.01.html. Retrieved 3 March Marcus, E. (2006). Events, sortals, and the mind-body problem. Synthese, 150, O Connor, T. (2008). Theism and ultimate explanation: The necessary shape of contingency. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Parfit, D. (1998). Why anything? Why this? London Review of Books, 20(2), 24 27; 20(3), Rowe, W. L. (1975). The cosmological argument. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rowe, W. L. (2005). Cosmological arguments. In W. E. Mann (Ed.), The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of religion (pp ). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Rundle, B. (2004). Why there is something rather than nothing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schaffer, J. (2003). Is there a fundamental level? Noûs, 37, Thomasson, A. L. (2007). Ordinary objects. New York: Oxford University Press. Thomasson, A. L. (2009). Answerable and unanswerable questions. In D. J. Chalmers, et al. (Eds.), Metametaphysics: New essays on the foundations of ontology (pp ). New York: Oxford University Press. Van Inwagen, P. (1996). Why is there anything at all? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 70, Waismann, F. (2005). Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wiggins, D. (1967). Identity and spatio-temporal continuity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Critical Study David Benatar. Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Critical Study David Benatar. Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) NOÛS 43:4 (2009) 776 785 Critical Study David Benatar. Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) ELIZABETH HARMAN Princeton University In this

More information

Last time we had arrived at the following provisional interpretation of Aquinas second way:

Last time we had arrived at the following provisional interpretation of Aquinas second way: Aquinas Third Way Last time we had arrived at the following provisional interpretation of Aquinas second way: 1. 2. 3. 4. At least one thing has an efficient cause. Every causal chain must either be circular,

More information

The Meta-Problem of Change

The Meta-Problem of Change NOÛS 43:2 (2009) 286 314 The Meta-Problem of Change THOMAS HOFWEBER University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1. Introduction One of the central problems in metaphysics over the last so many centuries

More information

INDEX OF TEMPLATES INTRODUCING WHAT THEY SAY

INDEX OF TEMPLATES INTRODUCING WHAT THEY SAY INDEX OF TEMPLATES INTRODUCING WHAT THEY SAY A number of sociologists have recently suggested that X s work has several fundamental problems. It has become common today to dismiss X s contribution to the

More information

Supervenience and co-location. by Michael C. Rea

Supervenience and co-location. by Michael C. Rea American Philosophical Quarterly July 1997 v34 n3 p367(9) Page 1 by Michael C. Rea Co-location is compatible with the doctrine of microphysical supervenience. Microphysical supervenience involves intrinsic

More information

A Short Course in Logic Zeno s Paradox

A Short Course in Logic Zeno s Paradox 1 Grappling with Good Arguments A Short Course in Logic Zeno s Paradox We ve seen that if we decide that an argument is good then we should be inclined to believe that the ultimate conclusion is true.

More information

Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research

Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research J. T. M. Miller, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham 1 Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research Much of the apparent difficulty of interdisciplinary research stems from the nature

More information

How does the problem of relativity relate to Thomas Kuhn s concept of paradigm?

How does the problem of relativity relate to Thomas Kuhn s concept of paradigm? How does the problem of relativity relate to Thomas Kuhn s concept of paradigm? Eli Bjørhusdal After having published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, Kuhn was much criticised for the use

More information

1 Must the universe have a cause?

1 Must the universe have a cause? 1 Must the universe have a cause? Nothing will come of nothing. William Shakespeare, King Lear THE MYSTERIES OF EXISTENCE Why does the universe exist? Why do living things exist? Why do intelligent beings

More information

Quine on truth by convention

Quine on truth by convention Quine on truth by convention March 8, 2005 1 Linguistic explanations of necessity and the a priori.............. 1 2 Relative and absolute truth by definition.................... 2 3 Is logic true by convention?...........................

More information

The Slate Is Not Empty: Descartes and Locke on Innate Ideas

The Slate Is Not Empty: Descartes and Locke on Innate Ideas The Slate Is Not Empty: Descartes and Locke on Innate Ideas René Descartes and John Locke, two of the principal philosophers who shaped modern philosophy, disagree on several topics; one of them concerns

More information

NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS

NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS Michael Lacewing Personal identity: Physical and psychological continuity theories A FIRST DISTINCTION In order to understand what is at issue in personal identity, it is important to distinguish between

More information

In Defense of Kantian Moral Theory Nader Shoaibi University of California, Berkeley

In Defense of Kantian Moral Theory Nader Shoaibi University of California, Berkeley In Defense of Kantian Moral Theory University of California, Berkeley In this paper, I will argue that Kant provides us with a plausible account of morality. To show that, I will first offer a major criticism

More information

An Innocent Investigation

An Innocent Investigation An Innocent Investigation D. Joyce, Clark University January 2006 The beginning. Have you ever wondered why every number is either even or odd? I don t mean to ask if you ever wondered whether every number

More information

Pascal is here expressing a kind of skepticism about the ability of human reason to deliver an answer to this question.

Pascal is here expressing a kind of skepticism about the ability of human reason to deliver an answer to this question. Pascal s wager So far we have discussed a number of arguments for or against the existence of God. In the reading for today, Pascal asks not Does God exist? but Should we believe in God? What is distinctive

More information

On the Paradox of the Question

On the Paradox of the Question On the Paradox of the Question Theodore Sider Analysis 57 (1997): 97 101 Ned Markosian (1997) tells a story in which philosophers have an opportunity to ask an angel a single question. In order to circumvent

More information

Writing Thesis Defense Papers

Writing Thesis Defense Papers Writing Thesis Defense Papers The point of these papers is for you to explain and defend a thesis of your own critically analyzing the reasoning offered in support of a claim made by one of the philosophers

More information

1/9. Locke 1: Critique of Innate Ideas

1/9. Locke 1: Critique of Innate Ideas 1/9 Locke 1: Critique of Innate Ideas This week we are going to begin looking at a new area by turning our attention to the work of John Locke, who is probably the most famous English philosopher of all

More information

Approaches to Apologetics

Approaches to Apologetics Approaches to Apologetics By John McClean Matthias Media (The Briefing #119; www.matthiasmedia.com.au/briefing). Used with permission. A poverty stricken student reaches the end of her financial resources

More information

Argument Mapping 2: Claims and Reasons

Argument Mapping 2: Claims and Reasons #2 Claims and Reasons 1 Argument Mapping 2: Claims and Reasons We ll start with the very basics here, so be patient. It becomes far more challenging when we apply these basic rules to real arguments, as

More information

They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing

They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein ENTERING THE CONVERSATION Many Americans assume that Others more complicated: On the one hand,. On the other

More information

Philosophical argument

Philosophical argument Michael Lacewing Philosophical argument At the heart of philosophy is philosophical argument. Arguments are different from assertions. Assertions are simply stated; arguments always involve giving reasons.

More information

Scanlon and the claims of the many versus the one

Scanlon and the claims of the many versus the one 288 michael otsuka the Kantian principle is true, so is Weak PAP; and Frankfurter s known arguments in opposition to PAP are in conflict with this basic Kantian moral intuition. 5 Bar-Ilan University Ramat

More information

Writing = A Dialogue. Part I. They Say

Writing = A Dialogue. Part I. They Say Writing = A Dialogue You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is

More information

THEY SAY: Reporting what authors are saying about a topic

THEY SAY: Reporting what authors are saying about a topic School of Liberal Arts University Writing Center Because writers need readers Cavanaugh Hall 427 University Library 2125 (317)274-2049 (317)278-8171 www.iupui.edu/~uwc Literature Review Templates: How

More information

CONCEPTUAL CONTINGENCY AND ABSTRACT EXISTENCE

CONCEPTUAL CONTINGENCY AND ABSTRACT EXISTENCE 87 CONCEPTUAL CONTINGENCY AND ABSTRACT EXISTENCE BY MARK COLYVAN Mathematical statements such as There are infinitely many prime numbers and 2 ℵ 0 > ℵ 0 are usually thought to be necessarily true. Not

More information

Does rationality consist in responding correctly to reasons? John Broome Journal of Moral Philosophy, 4 (2007), pp. 349 74.

Does rationality consist in responding correctly to reasons? John Broome Journal of Moral Philosophy, 4 (2007), pp. 349 74. Does rationality consist in responding correctly to reasons? John Broome Journal of Moral Philosophy, 4 (2007), pp. 349 74. 1. Rationality and responding to reasons Some philosophers think that rationality

More information

Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies Author(s): David Lewis Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 7 (Apr. 8, 1971), pp. 203-211 Published by:

More information

Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008. [Handout 4] Hilary Putnam: Why There Isn t A Ready-Made World

Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008. [Handout 4] Hilary Putnam: Why There Isn t A Ready-Made World 1 Putnam s Main Theses: 1. There is no ready-made world. Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008 [Handout 4] Hilary Putnam: Why There Isn t A Ready-Made World * [A ready-made world]: The world itself has to

More information

Alexy's Thesis of the Necessary Connection between Law and Morality*

Alexy's Thesis of the Necessary Connection between Law and Morality* Ratio Juris. Vol. 13 No. 2 June 2000 (133±137) Alexy's Thesis of the Necessary Connection between Law and Morality* EUGENIO BULYGIN Abstract. This paper criticizes Alexy's argument on the necessary connection

More information

CHAPTER II THE LIMIT OF A SEQUENCE OF NUMBERS DEFINITION OF THE NUMBER e.

CHAPTER II THE LIMIT OF A SEQUENCE OF NUMBERS DEFINITION OF THE NUMBER e. CHAPTER II THE LIMIT OF A SEQUENCE OF NUMBERS DEFINITION OF THE NUMBER e. This chapter contains the beginnings of the most important, and probably the most subtle, notion in mathematical analysis, i.e.,

More information

Kant s deontological ethics

Kant s deontological ethics Michael Lacewing Kant s deontological ethics DEONTOLOGY Deontologists believe that morality is a matter of duty. We have moral duties to do things which it is right to do and moral duties not to do things

More information

Critical analysis. Be more critical! More analysis needed! That s what my tutors say about my essays. I m not really sure what they mean.

Critical analysis. Be more critical! More analysis needed! That s what my tutors say about my essays. I m not really sure what they mean. Critical analysis Be more critical! More analysis needed! That s what my tutors say about my essays. I m not really sure what they mean. I thought I had written a really good assignment this time. I did

More information

Subject area: Ethics. Injustice causes revolt. Discuss.

Subject area: Ethics. Injustice causes revolt. Discuss. Subject area: Ethics Title: Injustice causes revolt. Discuss. 1 Injustice causes revolt. Discuss. When we explain phenomena we rely on the assertion of facts. The sun rises because the earth turns on its

More information

Reality in the Eyes of Descartes and Berkeley. By: Nada Shokry 5/21/2013 AUC - Philosophy

Reality in the Eyes of Descartes and Berkeley. By: Nada Shokry 5/21/2013 AUC - Philosophy Reality in the Eyes of Descartes and Berkeley By: Nada Shokry 5/21/2013 AUC - Philosophy Shokry, 2 One person's craziness is another person's reality. Tim Burton This quote best describes what one finds

More information

How to Get Your Prayers Answered. By Dr. Roger Sapp

How to Get Your Prayers Answered. By Dr. Roger Sapp How to Get Your Prayers Answered By Dr. Roger Sapp There are many good Christians who pray daily with diligence and with discipline but seem to struggle to get their prayers answered by the Father. On

More information

Introduction. My thesis is summarized in my title, No. God, No Laws : the concept of a law of Nature cannot be

Introduction. My thesis is summarized in my title, No. God, No Laws : the concept of a law of Nature cannot be No God, No Laws Nancy Cartwright Philosophy LSE and UCSD Introduction. My thesis is summarized in my title, No God, No Laws : the concept of a law of Nature cannot be made sense of without God. It is not

More information

Psychology has been considered to have an autonomy from the other sciences (especially

Psychology has been considered to have an autonomy from the other sciences (especially THE AUTONOMY OF PSYCHOLOGY Tim Crane, University College London Psychology has been considered to have an autonomy from the other sciences (especially physical science) in at least two ways: in its subject-matter

More information

This chapter is all about cardinality of sets. At first this looks like a

This chapter is all about cardinality of sets. At first this looks like a CHAPTER Cardinality of Sets This chapter is all about cardinality of sets At first this looks like a very simple concept To find the cardinality of a set, just count its elements If A = { a, b, c, d },

More information

The John Locke Lectures 2009. Being Realistic about Reasons. T. M. Scanlon. Lecture 3: Motivation and the Appeal of Expressivism

The John Locke Lectures 2009. Being Realistic about Reasons. T. M. Scanlon. Lecture 3: Motivation and the Appeal of Expressivism The John Locke Lectures 2009 Being Realistic about Reasons T. M. Scanlon Lecture 3: Motivation and the Appeal of Expressivism The cognitivist view I have been defending has two important features in common

More information

WHAT ARE MATHEMATICAL PROOFS AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT?

WHAT ARE MATHEMATICAL PROOFS AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT? WHAT ARE MATHEMATICAL PROOFS AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT? introduction Many students seem to have trouble with the notion of a mathematical proof. People that come to a course like Math 216, who certainly

More information

Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008. [Handout 24] Michael J. Loux: Endurantism and Perdurantism

Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008. [Handout 24] Michael J. Loux: Endurantism and Perdurantism Phil 420: Metaphysics Spring 2008 [Handout 24] Michael J. Loux: Endurantism and Perdurantism Our common assumptions: Professor JeeLoo Liu 1. Things persist through time. 2. The familiar objects and persons

More information

Things That Might Not Have Been Michael Nelson University of California at Riverside mnelson@ucr.edu

Things That Might Not Have Been Michael Nelson University of California at Riverside mnelson@ucr.edu Things That Might Not Have Been Michael Nelson University of California at Riverside mnelson@ucr.edu Quantified Modal Logic (QML), to echo Arthur Prior, is haunted by the myth of necessary existence. Features

More information

Lecture 8 The Subjective Theory of Betting on Theories

Lecture 8 The Subjective Theory of Betting on Theories Lecture 8 The Subjective Theory of Betting on Theories Patrick Maher Philosophy 517 Spring 2007 Introduction The subjective theory of probability holds that the laws of probability are laws that rational

More information

Responding to Arguments against the Existence of God Based on Evil

Responding to Arguments against the Existence of God Based on Evil Responding to Arguments against the Existence of God Based on Evil By INTRODUCTION Throughout the history of western thought, numerous philosophers and great thinkers have struggled with what is known

More information

Traveling in A- and B- Time

Traveling in A- and B- Time Traveling in A- and B- Time Theodore Sider The Monist 88 (2005): 329 335 Some say that presentism precludes time travel into the past since it implies that the past does not exist, but this is a bad argument.

More information

Harvard College Program in General Education Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard University. A Guide to Writing in Ethical Reasoning 15

Harvard College Program in General Education Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard University. A Guide to Writing in Ethical Reasoning 15 Harvard College Program in General Education Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard University A Guide to Writing in Ethical Reasoning 15 A Guide to Writing in Ethical Reasoning 15 Professor Jay M. Harris

More information

The Refutation of Relativism

The Refutation of Relativism The Refutation of Relativism There are many different versions of relativism: ethical relativism conceptual relativism, and epistemic relativism are three. In this paper, I will be concerned with only

More information

Invalidity in Predicate Logic

Invalidity in Predicate Logic Invalidity in Predicate Logic So far we ve got a method for establishing that a predicate logic argument is valid: do a derivation. But we ve got no method for establishing invalidity. In propositional

More information

You will by now not be surprised that a version of the teleological argument can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.

You will by now not be surprised that a version of the teleological argument can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The design argument The different versions of the cosmological argument we discussed over the last few weeks were arguments for the existence of God based on extremely abstract and general features of

More information

Arguments and Dialogues

Arguments and Dialogues ONE Arguments and Dialogues The three goals of critical argumentation are to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments. The term argument is used in a special sense, referring to the giving of reasons

More information

1 Uncertainty and Preferences

1 Uncertainty and Preferences In this chapter, we present the theory of consumer preferences on risky outcomes. The theory is then applied to study the demand for insurance. Consider the following story. John wants to mail a package

More information

"I'll Be Glad I Did It" Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires. Elizabeth Harman. Word Count: 4,499. I. Two Puzzles

I'll Be Glad I Did It Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires. Elizabeth Harman. Word Count: 4,499. I. Two Puzzles RoME Version 2009 "I'll Be Glad I Did It" Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires Elizabeth Harman Word Count: 4,499 I. Two Puzzles We use I ll be glad I did it reasoning all the time. For example,

More information

COMPARATIVES WITHOUT DEGREES: A NEW APPROACH. FRIEDERIKE MOLTMANN IHPST, Paris fmoltmann@univ-paris1.fr

COMPARATIVES WITHOUT DEGREES: A NEW APPROACH. FRIEDERIKE MOLTMANN IHPST, Paris fmoltmann@univ-paris1.fr COMPARATIVES WITHOUT DEGREES: A NEW APPROACH FRIEDERIKE MOLTMANN IHPST, Paris fmoltmann@univ-paris1.fr It has become common to analyse comparatives by using degrees, so that John is happier than Mary would

More information

How To Answer The Question Of If There Is A God Or Not In The World

How To Answer The Question Of If There Is A God Or Not In The World NO ^US 39:2 (2005) 256 283 A Puzzle about Ontology THOMAS HOFWEBER University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1 Ontology Ontology is the philosophical discipline that tries to find out what there is:

More information

Divine command theory

Divine command theory Today we will be discussing divine command theory. But first I will give a (very) brief overview of the semester, and the discipline of philosophy. Why do this? One of the functions of an introductory

More information

Methodology in Social Psychology. Logics of inquiry

Methodology in Social Psychology. Logics of inquiry Methodology in Social Psychology Logics of inquiry How to carry out scientific research given our understanding of the nature of knowledge. Philosophy of Science clarifies why experimental, scientific

More information

Levels of measurement in psychological research:

Levels of measurement in psychological research: Research Skills: Levels of Measurement. Graham Hole, February 2011 Page 1 Levels of measurement in psychological research: Psychology is a science. As such it generally involves objective measurement of

More information

Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God S. Clarke

Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God S. Clarke Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God S. Clarke [Modified Fall 2009] 1. Large class of arguments. Sometimes they get very complex, as in Clarke s argument, but the basic idea is simple. Lets

More information

WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER FOR A GRADUATE SEMINAR IN POLITICAL SCIENCE Ashley Leeds Rice University

WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER FOR A GRADUATE SEMINAR IN POLITICAL SCIENCE Ashley Leeds Rice University WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER FOR A GRADUATE SEMINAR IN POLITICAL SCIENCE Ashley Leeds Rice University Here are some basic tips to help you in writing your research paper. The guide is divided into six sections

More information

CHAPTER 7 ARGUMENTS WITH DEFIITIONAL AND MISSING PREMISES

CHAPTER 7 ARGUMENTS WITH DEFIITIONAL AND MISSING PREMISES CHAPTER 7 ARGUMENTS WITH DEFIITIONAL AND MISSING PREMISES What You ll Learn in this Chapter In Chapters -5, we developed a skill set that s sufficient for the recognition, analysis, evaluation and construction

More information

How Do People Settle Disputes? How a Civil Trial Works in California

How Do People Settle Disputes? How a Civil Trial Works in California Article brought to you by the Administrative Office of the California Courts and California Council for the Social Studies in partnership for Civic Education How Do People Settle Disputes? How a Civil

More information

Hume on identity over time and persons

Hume on identity over time and persons Hume on identity over time and persons phil 20208 Jeff Speaks October 3, 2006 1 Why we have no idea of the self........................... 1 2 Change and identity................................. 2 3 Hume

More information

General Philosophy. Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College. Lecture 3: Induction

General Philosophy. Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College. Lecture 3: Induction General Philosophy Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College Lecture 3: Induction Hume s s Fork 2 Enquiry IV starts with a vital distinction between types of proposition: Relations of ideas can be known a priori

More information

Plato gives another argument for this claiming, relating to the nature of knowledge, which we will return to in the next section.

Plato gives another argument for this claiming, relating to the nature of knowledge, which we will return to in the next section. Michael Lacewing Plato s theor y of Forms FROM SENSE EXPERIENCE TO THE FORMS In Book V (476f.) of The Republic, Plato argues that all objects we experience through our senses are particular things. We

More information

What is the wealth of the United States? Who s got it? And how

What is the wealth of the United States? Who s got it? And how Introduction: What Is Data Analysis? What is the wealth of the United States? Who s got it? And how is it changing? What are the consequences of an experimental drug? Does it work, or does it not, or does

More information

Could I Have Been a Turnip? A Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Modality

Could I Have Been a Turnip? A Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Modality Could I Have Been a Turnip? A Very Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Modality Modality If something is possible, it could have happened. If something is necessary, it had to happen. If something

More information

CFSD 21 ST CENTURY SKILL RUBRIC CRITICAL & CREATIVE THINKING

CFSD 21 ST CENTURY SKILL RUBRIC CRITICAL & CREATIVE THINKING Critical and creative thinking (higher order thinking) refer to a set of cognitive skills or strategies that increases the probability of a desired outcome. In an information- rich society, the quality

More information

Lecture 1: Conceptual Tools in Metaphysics

Lecture 1: Conceptual Tools in Metaphysics Lecture 1: Conceptual Tools in Metaphysics Ted Sider May 14, 2016 1. Tools in metaphysics By tools in metaphysics I mean the core concepts used to articulate metaphysical problems. They re a lens through

More information

Locke s psychological theory of personal identity

Locke s psychological theory of personal identity Locke s psychological theory of personal identity phil 20208 Jeff Speaks October 3, 2006 1 Identity, diversity, and kinds............................. 1 2 Personal identity...................................

More information

The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World

The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World 252 The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World, by Thomas Sattig. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 288 pages, ISBN 9780199683017 (hbk). In The Double Lives of

More information

Notes on Factoring. MA 206 Kurt Bryan

Notes on Factoring. MA 206 Kurt Bryan The General Approach Notes on Factoring MA 26 Kurt Bryan Suppose I hand you n, a 2 digit integer and tell you that n is composite, with smallest prime factor around 5 digits. Finding a nontrivial factor

More information

How To Defend Your Theory Of The Universe From A Philosophical Argument

How To Defend Your Theory Of The Universe From A Philosophical Argument Must Philosophers Rely on Intuitions? Avner Baz For several decades now philosophers in the mainstream of analytic philosophy, in their pursuit of a theory of x (knowledge, necessary truth, causation,

More information

Last May, philosopher Thomas Nagel reviewed a book by Michael Sandel titled

Last May, philosopher Thomas Nagel reviewed a book by Michael Sandel titled Fourth Quarter, 2006 Vol. 29, No. 4 Editor s Watch Sandel and Nagel on Abortion Last May, philosopher Thomas Nagel reviewed a book by Michael Sandel titled Public Philosophy in The New York Review of Books.

More information

DISCUSSION NOTE JUSTIFICATIONS AND EXCUSES: MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE?

DISCUSSION NOTE JUSTIFICATIONS AND EXCUSES: MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE? DISCUSSION NOTE BY MARK MCBRIDE JOURNAL OF ETHICS & SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY DISCUSSION NOTE JUNE 2011 URL: WWW.JESP.ORG COPYRIGHT MARK MCBRIDE 2011 Justifications and Excuses: Mutually Exclusive? V IRTUALLY

More information

Why I Am Not a Property Dualist

Why I Am Not a Property Dualist John R. Searle Why I Am Not a Property Dualist I have argued in a number of writings 1 that the philosophical part (though not the neurobiological part) of the traditional mind body problem has a fairly

More information

Against Zangwill s Extreme Formalism About Inorganic Nature

Against Zangwill s Extreme Formalism About Inorganic Nature DOI 10.1007/s11406-014-9575-1 Against Zangwill s Extreme Formalism About Inorganic Nature Min Xu & Guifang Deng Received: 20 August 2014 / Revised: 30 October 2014 / Accepted: 17 November 2014 # Springer

More information

How to Get Your Prayers Answered By Dr. Roger Sapp

How to Get Your Prayers Answered By Dr. Roger Sapp How to Get Your Prayers Answered By Dr. Roger Sapp There are many good Christians who pray daily with diligence and with discipline but seem to struggle to get their prayers answered by the Father. On

More information

INVESTIGATING CAR HISTORIES CLERICAL AND ROUTINE WORK, GREAT VALUE

INVESTIGATING CAR HISTORIES CLERICAL AND ROUTINE WORK, GREAT VALUE INVESTIGATING CAR HISTORIES CLERICAL AND ROUTINE WORK, GREAT VALUE Overview The NCLC s Autofraud manual has over 40 pages of detailed discussion about investigation of a vehicle s history, and an appendix

More information

A Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paper

A Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paper HARVARD COLLEGE Writing Center WRITING CENTER BRIEF GUIDE SERIES A Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paper The Challenges of Philosophical Writing The aim of the assignments in your philosophy classes

More information

Is there a problem about nonconceptual content?

Is there a problem about nonconceptual content? Is there a problem about nonconceptual content? Jeff Speaks (forthcoming in the Philosophical Review) 1 Two understandings of nonconceptual content.................. 1 2 The case for nonconceptual content..........................

More information

Copyright The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., February 1958 Reprinted with permission by A.A. World Services, Inc.

Copyright The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., February 1958 Reprinted with permission by A.A. World Services, Inc. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.

More information

Time and Causation in Gödel s Universe.

Time and Causation in Gödel s Universe. Time and Causation in Gödel s Universe. John L. Bell In 1949 the great logician Kurt Gödel constructed the first mathematical models of the universe in which travel into the past is, in theory at least,

More information

COLLEGE ALGEBRA. Paul Dawkins

COLLEGE ALGEBRA. Paul Dawkins COLLEGE ALGEBRA Paul Dawkins Table of Contents Preface... iii Outline... iv Preliminaries... Introduction... Integer Exponents... Rational Exponents... 9 Real Exponents...5 Radicals...6 Polynomials...5

More information

Skepticism about the external world & the problem of other minds

Skepticism about the external world & the problem of other minds Skepticism about the external world & the problem of other minds So far in this course we have, broadly speaking, discussed two different sorts of issues: issues connected with the nature of persons (a

More information

6b: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS

6b: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS 6b: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS Introduction Mary Ratcliffe R Recommended reading for this Element For those who are interested in doing qualitative research, the following are very useful books: Tesch,

More information

On Philipse s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments

On Philipse s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments 1 On Philipse s Attempt to Write Off All Deductive Cosmological Arguments Emanuel Rutten Abstract In his 2012 book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason Herman Philipse argues that

More information

MILD DILEMMAS. Keywords: standard moral dilemmas, mild dilemmas, blame

MILD DILEMMAS. Keywords: standard moral dilemmas, mild dilemmas, blame MILD DILEMMAS Gregory Mellema Department of Philosophy Calvin College Grand Rapids, MI mell@calvin.edu Abstract. This paper argues that, while the existence of strong moral dilemmas is notoriously controversial,

More information

P R I M A R Y A N D S E C O N D A R Y Q U A L I T I E S

P R I M A R Y A N D S E C O N D A R Y Q U A L I T I E S P R I M A R Y A N D S E C O N D A R Y Q U A L I T I E S W E E K 1 1. Overview Week 1: Introduction to the Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction. Week 2: Dispositionalist Views of Colour Week 3: Colour

More information

I LL BE GLAD I DID IT REASONING AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FUTURE DESIRES. Elizabeth Harman Princeton University

I LL BE GLAD I DID IT REASONING AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FUTURE DESIRES. Elizabeth Harman Princeton University Philosophical Perspectives, 23, Ethics, 2009 I LL BE GLAD I DID IT REASONING AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FUTURE DESIRES Elizabeth Harman Princeton University I. Two Puzzles We use I ll be glad I did it reasoning

More information

Club Accounts. 2011 Question 6.

Club Accounts. 2011 Question 6. Club Accounts. 2011 Question 6. Anyone familiar with Farm Accounts or Service Firms (notes for both topics are back on the webpage you found this on), will have no trouble with Club Accounts. Essentially

More information

Linguistics, Psychology, and the Ontology of Language. Noam Chomsky s well-known claim that linguistics is a branch of cognitive

Linguistics, Psychology, and the Ontology of Language. Noam Chomsky s well-known claim that linguistics is a branch of cognitive Linguistics, Psychology, and the Ontology of Language Noam Chomsky s well-known claim that linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology (Chomsky 1972, 1) has generated a great deal of dissent not from

More information

or conventional implicature [1]. If the implication is only pragmatic, explicating logical truth, and, thus, also consequence and inconsistency.

or conventional implicature [1]. If the implication is only pragmatic, explicating logical truth, and, thus, also consequence and inconsistency. 44 ANALYSIS explicating logical truth, and, thus, also consequence and inconsistency. Let C1 and C2 be distinct moral codes formulated in English. Let C1 contain a norm N and C2 its negation. The moral

More information

Introduction. Hegel s Trinitarian Claim

Introduction. Hegel s Trinitarian Claim Hegel s Trinitarian Claim G. W. F. Hegel is one of the greatest thinkers of the Greek-Western trinitarian tradition. He said that the theologians of his day had effective ly abandoned the doctrine of the

More information

Chapter 2 Thesis Structure

Chapter 2 Thesis Structure Chapter 2 Thesis Structure Karen was undertaking a PhD in engineering to investigate whether a new type of plastic was safe to use as cookware. When she started her lab work, she decided to begin writing

More information

The Psychic Salesperson Speakers Edition

The Psychic Salesperson Speakers Edition The Psychic Salesperson Speakers Edition Report: The Three Parts of the Sales Process by Dave Dee Limits of Liability & Disclaimer of Warranty The author and publisher of this book and the associated materials

More information

ARE THERE IRREDUCIBLY NORMATIVE PROPERTIES?

ARE THERE IRREDUCIBLY NORMATIVE PROPERTIES? ARE THERE IRREDUCIBLY NORMATIVE PROPERTIES? Bart Streumer b.streumer@rug.nl Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2008): 537-561 Published version available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048400802215349

More information

Linear Programming Notes VII Sensitivity Analysis

Linear Programming Notes VII Sensitivity Analysis Linear Programming Notes VII Sensitivity Analysis 1 Introduction When you use a mathematical model to describe reality you must make approximations. The world is more complicated than the kinds of optimization

More information

The Separability of Free Will and Moral Responsibility

The Separability of Free Will and Moral Responsibility 254 Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy Illusionism Determinism Hard Determinism Compatibilism Soft Determinism Hard Incompatibilism Impossibilism Valerian Model Soft Compatibilism The Separability of

More information

Program Level Learning Outcomes for the Department of Philosophy Page 1

Program Level Learning Outcomes for the Department of Philosophy Page 1 Page 1 PHILOSOPHY General Major I. Depth and Breadth of Knowledge. A. Will be able to recall what a worldview is and recognize that we all possess one. B. Should recognize that philosophy is most broadly

More information